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Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Dell PowerStore comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerMax NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
8th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 8.8%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 23.6%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Haseeb Khalid Sheikh - PeerSpot reviewer
End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity
The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.
Brian Ricci - PeerSpot reviewer
It's constantly enhanced and has impressive reliability and data compression
The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."
"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."
"We are able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."
"The performance is very good. Our predominant workloads are all less than 5 milliseconds and it's most common to have a sub-1-millisecond response time for our applications. In terms of efficiency, we've turned on compression and we're able to get as high as two-to-one compression on our workloads, on average."
"The SRDF site-to-site replication for the volumes is the most important feature for us. That enables us to do site recovery and replication for our VMware infrastructure."
"NVMe technology improves input/output performance."
"It has dramatically cut down the footprint in our data center and reduced the amount of raw disk capacity that we needed to purchase."
"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."
"The performance is very good on our servers. It's superior. And the QoS capabilities for providing work congestion protection are also important because about 99 percent of our servers are production servers."
"Updates come with enhancements. Each time we do an update, there is an enhancement, like new features, which is extraordinary. Other companies would try to charge for all that, but the enhancements just come with it."
"The most valuable feature is the functionality of the integration between the storage and the domain."
"It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy."
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the resilience, scalability, flexibility of expansion, and ease of managing the entire solution including the servers and storage."
"We used Cloud IQ. The central management and outside support functionality were great since we had systems all over the world."
"The software upgrades are all included for no additional charge."
"Its flexibility is valuable because we have had some moments where we had to adapt, and it has been quite flexible."
"The product is reliable and stable."
 

Cons

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability."
"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."
"The main feature that I personally want to see is the possibility to upgrade to the next generation without changing all the components and just change the engine, relying on the compatibility matrices between two different generations. Meaning that we could just keep the enclosure and upgrade the engine, integrating the enclosure to the existing pool, then adding automation tools for orchestration."
"There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe is costly compared to other solutions."
"The solution does not use new versions of OS and patches. Its installation is also difficult. The solution is not as fast as other storage in the market."
"I would like to see the rack change. They have defaulted to the standard rack, so our fiber cables are crowded when we shut our back door."
"The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter."
"It would be helpful for us to have support for the S3 protocol because our main competitor has the S3 protocol in their system."
"Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done."
"Horizontal scaling has room for improvement."
"Users can be enrolled in lifecycle extension with pro support. The pricing for that is too high for PowerStore."
"The biggest area in PowerStore that needs improvement is the overall visibility within the ESX environment."
"We are happy with the service in general. The only thing would be the price of the platform."
"Data reduction needs improvement."
"The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The product is expensive."
"Its price is competitive, but they need to have a different price for West Africa. They can do better with the price point to allow us to scale even more. We wanted to migrate our entire storage infrastructure to PowerMax, which would require us to buy more capacity, and from the price point, it didn't attract us."
"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."
"The price is really high."
"Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charges, billing only for used capacity. As a 360° partner, significant discounts are available."
"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."
"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."
"The price is starting from $500,000."
"The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."
"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."
"Dell PowerStore charges for the hardware warranty every three years. The price will depend on the storage model or how much hardware it has."
"Pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"When we compared it with the other solutions, the pricing of PowerStore was equal. The pricing is good."
"Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerStore?
It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
PowerStore
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell PowerStore and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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